Do you want an easier wooden go-cart to make? Want a more fun and friendly cart to drive, with a Steering wheel? People have emailed in asking these questions, so I dug out an old set of cart plans and revamped them. Below is an image of the wooden cart you can build. The plans for this are all finished and available now.

A sample page of the plans can be seen below. To download and obtain all 10 detailed Drawings, head to the kartbuilding.net website.

Overview

I recently bought the book “Build Your Own Off-Road Buggy for as Little as £100″ for £8 including postage and shipping from amazon. Overall it was an enjoyable read. I had hoped for more in-depth discussion and details on certain aspects of the kart. The book provided details on building one particular design but didn’t explain why or how to a lot of the details and measurements chosen. That could well be a good thing for a person making their first kart (or buggy as its called). For you folk working in dollars, 100 UK Pounds = 155 Dollars. After reading the book, and looking at the parts the author used (e.g. the wheels and bearings etc.), it would be a tight stretch to get the whole kart built for £100 or $155.

Audience

The book is geared towards adults helping them build a kart (buggy). The person building the kart would want a good level of DIY skills. It is also expected that a person obtain a welder either by buying a new or second-hand welder, or hiring one. It was difficult following the text and images in some places, trying to fully understand what is been described and I found myself reading paragraphs three and four times.

Relevance

The book was highly relevant to a person confident with DIY skills in building an engine powered go-kart. While it did not explain the “why” of certain angles and details, it provided enough dimensions, that if all followed correctly would work.
I did feel that some of the areas were sparse and outside the scope of home workshop capability. One example of this is where a “differential flange” from a ford car was used and modified to act as a hub for mounting the rear wheels. Another flange was then used for the sprocket carrier and brake disc carrier. While this in fact is a very innovative idea and one which I had not considered, modifying one of these differential flanges would require a metalwork lathe and a lot of work. (Of course the option of buying new or old hubs from a go-kart is suggested).

The book which has 90 pages has just enough information and diagrams to build the standard kart. It is clear that the author has made a few of the karts themselves. The author also got a friend to try following the book and building the same kart.
I do think a simpler design could have been chosen. The kart chassis has 3 members requiring a pipe bender. I also think the pedal design is poor. Using 5mm flat steel bent into an L shape would in my opinion be insufficient and would bend easily (as the pivot is just a hole in the 5mm steel bar). I prefer using 20mm pipe for the pedals.

Chapters

Skills required

Tools, equipment and workshop safety

Sourcing what you need

Making the frame

Front axle and steering

The engine and gearbox

Drivetrain and brake

Controls and starting devices

Finishing and final build

Using your Buggy

Good Points

Information on different places to source parts, materials and engineering services were outlined.

Information on kart safety, safety when building the kart, best places to drive the kart is provided.

Loads of information on welding, different types of welding and background information on Gas Welding is detailed.

Poor Points

No explanation of certain areas (such as camber, castor and ackermann angles) of building the part is outlined.

No set of complete plans, but rather all details were spread out throughout the book.

To build the kart as shown, you would need a pipe bender and metalwork lathe (to machine the hubs and sprocket carrier)

While “alternative solutions” were provided for example track rod ends, no measurements or details of these were given.

Conclusion

I have previously purchased complete sets of plans for off-road karts and buggies. While I found this book enjoyable, easy to read and informative, I think it didn’t explain enough of the details. I would have also liked to see 15 pages with complete drawings of all components together. I like to be able to print the 15-20 pages showing the complete set of plans showing all the dimensions together. However for £8 it is certainly cheap and well worth a read and will help you make your first go-kart with a motorbike engine.

Popular science recently put all of their published magazines on the Internet. As soon as I heard, I couldn’t wait to search for any “kart” related articles. I remember seeing old magazines amongst my fathers collection and was amazed at the details and information which was available for making all sorts of projects going back even to the start of the 19th century. A quick search here led me to some of the articles shown in the image below.

I came across lots of advertisements and classifieds for go-kart kits but a lot of these were pretty old. Other search keywords which returned lots of results were “buggy” and “engine” and “motorcycle”. Have fun searching through. If anyone comes across any more good articles, feel free to email them on or add a comment. In case anyone was wondering it is an old “Modern Mechanix” magazine article showing kart plans from 1962 on the main kartbuilding.net website.

I recently recieved a comment from Jason with a link to his website where he has put details of making a very cool wooden go-kart. Whats very nice about this kart is that it uses a pedal crank and chain to drive the kart. I get a lot of emails asking how to implement a pedal drive for the wooden-go-karts listed here. Typically these people want to make the wooden push go-kart first. Then upgrade to a pedal powered wooden-go-kart and finally maybe attach a small engine.

The plans for the wooden go-kart powered by a lawnmower engine are finally finished. Below is a collage showing thumbnail images of the 21 drawings in the set of comprehensive plans for this go-kart. Full parts lists (shopping lists) and Tools required for this kart have all been documented. There still is no costing / overall price for each part done yet, but when it is it will be included. Head on over to the main kartbuilding website to see the completed set of plans.

Up until this I didn’t allow comments to blog posts, simply because it can be a honey-pot for spam. Anyways with the new captcha system, and my easy wordpress upgrade facility (svn) you can add comments easily. I hope to reply to comments whenever I can. Feel free to drop me an email either. You can also follow the kartbuilding Mailing List.

I’ve been meaning to update the Basic Wooden Kart plans to include provision for using a Lawnmower Engine to drive the Go-Kart. Quite a lot of people have being asking for the various details for this Wooden Go-Kart, and instead of doing bits and pieces, I decided to model the entire Go-Kart. Key aspects of this kart include:

Lawnmower Engine used to power the go-kart.

A Clutch system to allow the engine to idle.

Using brakes of a bicycle.

I’ve just finished all the 3D Modelling of the kart, and will be doing the Plans and 2D Drawings very soon. Meanwhile below is a taster of what the Lawnmower Engine powered Go-Kart looks like. I did have old plans for this wooden kart, however they were very old, and done in 2D CAD.

3D Model to Zoom / Rotate

Stay tuned to www.kartbuilding.net where I will be publishing the complete set of plans for this engine powered kart. I will also be making some videos showing the assembly of the kart, the key components and the operation of the kart. Following the tips and feedback of many people who contacted me at , I will be making a complete Bill of Materials / Shopping List of part and components, so that anyone will be able to build this kart. If you have any requests on what is included in the 2D printable plans, drop me an email.

I had hoped to do an extensive review of the many websites on designing and making go-karts, but I came across the following one which stitches together many different sites on kart plans into one single page in a step by step manner. It has YouTube Videos, Picture slideshows, photos and lots of other information.

When I started the first Kartbuilding website in 2001 (archive link), there was very little information available on karts and kart plans on the Internet. In the last few years however the information, videos, plans etc. has increased enormously. This is great news for anyone wanting to build a kart. If you have any good websites on building karts, feel free to drop us an email ( kartbuilding at gmail.com )

I’m sure you’ll agree its some experience. What more incentive would a person need to get involved in karting. I do hope that was a closed road they were driving on! If the above video stops working, just drop us an email ( ).

I’ve always liked Popular Mechanics, from reading old copies which my Dad used to get (many years ago), to browsing their website. I’ve even blogged about articles from their website before, however this month’s article is especially cool!

Bryan, a 37 year old assistant manager at a Mitsubishi dealership devised this backyard invention complete from old parts and scrap metal! He got the power turbine on eBay and modded the rest himself. His total bill came to $1000 which might sound like a lot, however we do not know how much the turbine cost. The final kart weighing in at nearly 500lb reaches an astonishing 60mph in 8 seconds! There is a youtube video also available, showing the kart in action. It sure sounds loud! I bet the neighbours were giving out, it been late at night and all when they took the video :-)

It seems that you can buy just about anything on eBaythese days. For kartbuilding, this is great news as odd parts and components can easily be sourced, however it can cost quite a bit if you have to pay for shipping. Most of the time, with some patience and looking in skips and yards etc. all the parts can be obtained for virtually nothing.

While the articleitself lacks a lot of inside information into the build, it provides great inspiration to many people looking to build karts from old pieces of scrap and second-hand parts. The popular mechanics website also provides great inspiration and a wealth of information on engines, motorbikes, chassis’s, brakes and just about everything that’s involved with kartbuilding. Hopefully the summer and go-kart building is going well for all of you.